This problem is real. As a non native speaker myself, I only became reasonably reading fluent in English around 19 years old. I remember well how hard was to learn it. Some things a native speaker takes for granted seems ludicrous to those that don't know it well. For example, in programming, pythonistas take pride in saying Python is easy to understand because it reads like plain english, like pseudo code that runs. Guess what, for those that don't know English, it doesn't make any difference. The keywords are as cryptic to learn as assembly opcodes or any other random language syntax.
There must be a lingua franca and English is likely among the best choices, considering its widespread adoption and relatively low barrier of entry (try Japanese or Vietnamese and you will see what I meant).
But it is true that there is cost to non-English speakers. Maybe we can lower the standard a little bit? I don't mean broken Engrish but if the sentences make sense and the grammar is correct, maybe that is good enough?
Japanese the language qua language is relatively easy from a language agnostic perspective. Formality levels are tricky, but the phonology is fairly simple (very few "weird" sounds) and the grammar is on the regular side.
The writing system on the other hand... IMO the worst used by any major language in the world. Graft a logographic system (already a bad choice to start) from an isolating language onto a highly synthetic verb system, necessitating a whole extra syllabary. Evolve numerous "readings" of each logogram, depending on etymology and history. Then tack on a 2nd syllabary for abstruse historical reasons.
> But it is true that there is cost to non-English speakers. Maybe we can lower the standard a little bit? I don't mean broken Engrish but if the sentences make sense and the grammar is correct, maybe that is good enough?
We can't demand things like that. If a paper reads like amateur English, reviewers are pretty much guaranteed to turn it down with higher probability, even if the factual quality is somewhat better than of a well-written paper. This is just how the mind works. Like wine from a cheap looking bottle tasting worse than the same wine from an expensive looking bottle.
Not true. The period of greatest scientific advancement in human history ( mid-19th to the mid-20th century ) had no lingua franca. Actually, the end of french as a 'lingua franca' in europe in the first half of 1800s can partly be credited with the burgeoning of science ( and other academic fields ) in britain, germany, russia, etc. Just like the ending of latin as 'lingua franca' ( beginning of the 'vulgar' period ) led to the burgeoning of religion, philosophy, literature, etc throughout europe.
> Maybe we can lower the standard a little bit? I don't mean broken Engrish but if the sentences make sense and the grammar is correct, maybe that is good enough?
Or maybe people should speak their own language and 'do science' in their own language.
What's more preferable? Having one billion chinese learn english to study algebra with an english language textbook or translated that one algebra textbook into chinese and have one billion chinese learn algebra in chinese?
The dull and boring mono-linguistic and mono-culture world has led to stagnation. The world would be infinitely better off when that changes. When we have actual diversity, not the superficial diversity where we look different but all think and talk the same.
Look at the tech world today. Look at just europe alone. How great would it be if europe had a german, spanish, russian, french 'google/apple/microsoft/etc'? Now broaden that view to the arab, persian, chinese, indian, african, etc regions. So much diversity, knowledge, creativity, etc is lost because one group of people want to dominate the world. It's tragic.
As a native English speaker having learnt a foreign language, I can tell you that we're pretty goddamn lax in comparison. The English have long since made peace with the fact that their language has been usurped. They're okay with it, and make concessions for foreign language speakers; as long as the meaning is understood, nobody bothers correcting you.
Now try speaking French in France, or German in Germany. I don't know about Japanese in Japan, but I imagine it's the same or worse (from what I've heard second hand).
I can't see this as the injustice the article makes it out to be. Not standardizing on a single language would just cause more problems. If it wasn't English it would be something else.
The author isn’t arguing against English as a lingua franca, but it seems to me suggesting that there should be more accommodations for those who aren’t native English speakers because they are at a distinct disadvantage.
I have so much respect for students, researchers, and professors whose native language is not English. Not only have they reached a level of English proficiency that allows them to converse and share viewpoints with their colleagues, but also they can understand and express themselves using academic English styles specific to their fields.
For tech and science, english must be used as lingua franca/default.
This has nothing to do with any property of english or it's speakers, it is simply the path of least resistance for everyone involved. Due to media and existing materials, english (even badly worded/spoken) is much easier to pick up than most languages and opens up the most opportunities to the most people.
Learning Chinese is for example is much more difficult for most non-chinese with no added benefit unless they travel to china or work for a chinese company.
Perhaps if english was renamed to internationalese it would make things easier and more palatable.
Conversely there is the advantage of the narrow waist. the state where everything has to fit in the same container.
The biggest example of this is the internet, where we have many types of cable to carry information, and many applications that want to talk to each other, but everything speaks IP.
see also: containerized shipping, nema motor mounts.
So true, it is hard if english is not your first language, but there is this huge advantage to having a single common language that everyone speaks. today it is english, before that french, and before that latin.
Broken English in scientific papers are, if anything, a problem. I have a brother-in-law who doesn't speak English, but gets his papers translated into English to publish. There is no way for him to really know if they precise, accurate, and correct; as the person who knows his own research the best, he simply cannot review the paper.
As it might be possible for us to eventually improve our machine translation, it might be more valuable to keep his papers in Japanese.
Learning English is priority #1 for any human being right now. If you are able to communicate in english, so many opportunities and sources of information open up to you. It shocks me that some countries aren't making it mandatory, but that's due to nationalism and not wanting too much emigration/brain drain I suppose.
Not being moderately fluent in english is inexcusable in the modrn world, in the same that not being tech savvy, or not able to do math is inexcusable. There are basic skills that one needs to operate in a modern world. English is one of them. I appreciate the sentiment, but it's akin to complaining that "In the star wars universe, scientists who don't speak Galactic Basic Standard are at a huge disadvantage." Yes, they are, and it's their fault for not learning the common language. Same with English in 2023.
I don’t think this is as true as you make out. For the vast majority of people (who are born, live and die all in the same country/language community) should it really be their #1 priority to learn English? For example, a street food vendor in Chengdu, a phone salesman in Belo Horizonte, or a roofing contractor in Avignon. Or even a professor at a small university in Kagoshima. Learning English would probably open up some new opportunities for all these people. But to the extent they should dedicate years of study time to it? I’m not sure.
There have been different language barriers in the past—most notably Latin which wasn’t used natively by pretty much any speakers after a point and then German in some fields and French in European courts.
But yeah, English has become pretty much the standard language for many purposes and if you didn’t learn it as a native it’s something you have to learn as a non-native for many purposes.
Manuscripts from non-native speakers place a considerable burden upon unpaid peer reviewers. Going through 10,000 barely comprehensible words is not fun.
I think it's extremely unfair how much of an advantage us native anglophones have in the scientific realm. Doing anything interesting enough to get published is hard enough as it is, and I have to assume that it's substantially harder for people who are also fighting a language barrier as well.
A part of me wants something like Esperanto to take over this space.
>“Non-native English speakers constitute almost 95% of the world’s population,” Amano says. “If we don’t support those 95%, I’m sure we can’t solve many global challenges.”
Is 95% an accurate number? What percentage are not native speakers, but have near native fluency? I've been to Iceland and Denmark and everyone I spoke to in those places could speak English with near native fluency. I remember meeting one guy in a tiny village in northern Iceland. He sounded like a completely native American English speaker. It turned out that he had never even left his village to travel to Reykjavik, but still had me fooled into thinking that surely he had spent significant amount of time in America.
Norse people are pretty amazing when it comes to English speaking, next comes German and Dutch. It seems EU people are generally potent in multilingual. Granted English may be like a dialect to them.
Qem|2 years ago
tomohelix|2 years ago
But it is true that there is cost to non-English speakers. Maybe we can lower the standard a little bit? I don't mean broken Engrish but if the sentences make sense and the grammar is correct, maybe that is good enough?
akavi|2 years ago
The writing system on the other hand... IMO the worst used by any major language in the world. Graft a logographic system (already a bad choice to start) from an isolating language onto a highly synthetic verb system, necessitating a whole extra syllabary. Evolve numerous "readings" of each logogram, depending on etymology and history. Then tack on a 2nd syllabary for abstruse historical reasons.
cubefox|2 years ago
We can't demand things like that. If a paper reads like amateur English, reviewers are pretty much guaranteed to turn it down with higher probability, even if the factual quality is somewhat better than of a well-written paper. This is just how the mind works. Like wine from a cheap looking bottle tasting worse than the same wine from an expensive looking bottle.
goodbyesf|2 years ago
Not true. The period of greatest scientific advancement in human history ( mid-19th to the mid-20th century ) had no lingua franca. Actually, the end of french as a 'lingua franca' in europe in the first half of 1800s can partly be credited with the burgeoning of science ( and other academic fields ) in britain, germany, russia, etc. Just like the ending of latin as 'lingua franca' ( beginning of the 'vulgar' period ) led to the burgeoning of religion, philosophy, literature, etc throughout europe.
> Maybe we can lower the standard a little bit? I don't mean broken Engrish but if the sentences make sense and the grammar is correct, maybe that is good enough?
Or maybe people should speak their own language and 'do science' in their own language.
What's more preferable? Having one billion chinese learn english to study algebra with an english language textbook or translated that one algebra textbook into chinese and have one billion chinese learn algebra in chinese?
The dull and boring mono-linguistic and mono-culture world has led to stagnation. The world would be infinitely better off when that changes. When we have actual diversity, not the superficial diversity where we look different but all think and talk the same.
Look at the tech world today. Look at just europe alone. How great would it be if europe had a german, spanish, russian, french 'google/apple/microsoft/etc'? Now broaden that view to the arab, persian, chinese, indian, african, etc regions. So much diversity, knowledge, creativity, etc is lost because one group of people want to dominate the world. It's tragic.
ghusto|2 years ago
Lower them more you mean?
As a native English speaker having learnt a foreign language, I can tell you that we're pretty goddamn lax in comparison. The English have long since made peace with the fact that their language has been usurped. They're okay with it, and make concessions for foreign language speakers; as long as the meaning is understood, nobody bothers correcting you.
Now try speaking French in France, or German in Germany. I don't know about Japanese in Japan, but I imagine it's the same or worse (from what I've heard second hand).
Legend2440|2 years ago
nkrisc|2 years ago
ilamont|2 years ago
bitcuration|2 years ago
badrabbit|2 years ago
This has nothing to do with any property of english or it's speakers, it is simply the path of least resistance for everyone involved. Due to media and existing materials, english (even badly worded/spoken) is much easier to pick up than most languages and opens up the most opportunities to the most people.
Learning Chinese is for example is much more difficult for most non-chinese with no added benefit unless they travel to china or work for a chinese company.
Perhaps if english was renamed to internationalese it would make things easier and more palatable.
somat|2 years ago
The biggest example of this is the internet, where we have many types of cable to carry information, and many applications that want to talk to each other, but everything speaks IP.
see also: containerized shipping, nema motor mounts.
So true, it is hard if english is not your first language, but there is this huge advantage to having a single common language that everyone speaks. today it is english, before that french, and before that latin.
jbm|2 years ago
As it might be possible for us to eventually improve our machine translation, it might be more valuable to keep his papers in Japanese.
pie420|2 years ago
Not being moderately fluent in english is inexcusable in the modrn world, in the same that not being tech savvy, or not able to do math is inexcusable. There are basic skills that one needs to operate in a modern world. English is one of them. I appreciate the sentiment, but it's akin to complaining that "In the star wars universe, scientists who don't speak Galactic Basic Standard are at a huge disadvantage." Yes, they are, and it's their fault for not learning the common language. Same with English in 2023.
zztop44|2 years ago
ghaff|2 years ago
But yeah, English has become pretty much the standard language for many purposes and if you didn’t learn it as a native it’s something you have to learn as a non-native for many purposes.
dbcooper|2 years ago
tombert|2 years ago
A part of me wants something like Esperanto to take over this space.
dpc050505|2 years ago
English is an easy language to learn. I'm ESL and it's no big deal.
jeepers6|2 years ago
irrational|2 years ago
Is 95% an accurate number? What percentage are not native speakers, but have near native fluency? I've been to Iceland and Denmark and everyone I spoke to in those places could speak English with near native fluency. I remember meeting one guy in a tiny village in northern Iceland. He sounded like a completely native American English speaker. It turned out that he had never even left his village to travel to Reykjavik, but still had me fooled into thinking that surely he had spent significant amount of time in America.
bitcuration|2 years ago
unmole|2 years ago
lifthrasiir|2 years ago
You are right to wonder about that, but even when we assume every ESL speaker to be fluent enough the proportion only drops to 80%.